What’s Love Got To Do With It? The Neuroscience Of Empathy

You know, it’s funny. As I was sitting there before I came out, I was remembering an experience where I flew into a city to give a lecture.

I had flown from Hawaii, actually. I flew on the plane in a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops, and I just carried a suit and a shirt.

I got to the place where I was giving this lecture at 9:00 in the morning. I was having breakfast, one of my favorite things, which is waffles covered with powdered sugar.

As I was cutting my waffles, the entire plate slid onto my lap.

I had to give my lecture in shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. But that didn’t happen today, so I’m thankful.

For the last 25 years, which is hard for me to say, as a neurosurgeon and physician, I have had a goal of preventing death.

But what I can tell you is that some of the most profound experiences I have had as a human being have been with individuals who have truly lived but are dying.

For the last decade, as a neuroscientist, I have been on a quest to understand: What is it that prevents people from truly living?

When I say living, I’m not talking about showing up at your job. I’m not talking about going through the motions mindlessly of what we do every day.

I’m talking about truly living.

It’s funny. Somebody sent me a slide, and the slide said, “The definition of life.”

It said, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease that always ends in death.”

Actually, I thought that was fairly profound.

But when we talk about truly living, what do I mean by that?

Truly living means that your life has meaning, that you have contentment, that you have purpose and, ultimately, as you end your life, you have a sense of transcendence.

That feeling that your presence here on this earth, your life, had meaning, affected others in a positive way and that people will remember what you have done.

It doesn’t have to be on a national or international stage. It can be just with the people you have lived your life with.

Part of the problem, though, is that we have separated living from dying.

We have a healthcare system that is focused on illness, not wellness. It is focused on living but has so separated dying that, in fact, most physicians, I will tell you, see a person’s impending death as their failure.

Like many of us, when we are faced with failure, we want to distance ourselves from that feeling.

In fact, I will tell you that a large percentage of my colleagues, if we have a terminal patient, as soon as that’s evident, they will never see that patient again.

But as I said earlier, one of the things I’ve learned is that deep wisdom, purpose and meaning can be found in those individuals who are dying and who have truly lived.

But here is the paradox.

In the United States, we consume one-quarter of the world’s resources, yet we have an epidemic of stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness and isolation.

We have everything, but so often we have nothing.

The problem is that we are not truly living.

Yet I will assure you that our default mode as human beings, and what makes our species unique, is this immense capacity to connect, to care and to love.

Unfortunately, that default mode gets hijacked by what I call the baggage of our evolution.

What do I mean by that?

You may or may not know that our DNA has not changed for the last 200,000 years. We are exactly the same species that was on the savannah in Africa, and that is really the place where we evolved to react to that particular environment.

But modernity has far surpassed our ability as a species to evolve appropriately to react to it.

As a result, and our host there was kind enough to mention this book I wrote, which is A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, we have this connection between our brain, our heart and other organs.

In fact, it’s not a one-way street. It’s a two-way street.

Our default mode, through this pathway of our nervous system to our organs and specifically to our heart, is what makes us human. But it can also separate us from our humanity.

What do I mean by that?

For the last decade or so, as I mentioned, I have been on a quest, as have my colleagues, to understand what stops us from truly living.

What happens is that in modern society, we have artificial light. We have a variety of distractions.

As a result, this pathway that we have through our vagus nerve, which is called our autonomic nervous system, has two parts.

One of the parts is associated with what we call our fight, flight or freeze response. The mirror of that is what we call our rest-and-digest system.

Modern society has hijacked that pathway away from the parasympathetic input, this system where we’re open, where we connect, where we can easily love another and see the good parts of another, toward being anxious and afraid.

When we’re anxious and afraid, what happens is that we pull in. We don’t connect. We potentially see others as a threat.

Modern society has created a perfect environment for that.

Unlike hundreds of years ago or a few thousand years ago, when we lived as hunter-gatherers in groups of 10 to 50 and lived our whole lives with a small group of people, in that situation, first of all, you did not have fear.

You did not feel that you were being judged. You did not feel that you were not part of a group.

In fact, with every one of your faults, you were accepted and loved.

We don’t have that anymore.

We grow up in environments with people we don’t know. We have jobs where we very rarely talk to people.

As a result, in the United States, we have this epidemic of isolation, stress and anxiety.

In fact, if you did a survey, one-quarter of people will say that when they are in pain, when they’re suffering, when they hurt, they do not have a single person to share that with.

So when we talk about ending your life well, how is that possible when, as your end is upon you, you’re terrified because you’ve also been terrified as you’ve lived your life?

But the reality is that there is good news.

We have found that we have the capacity to change the paradigm.

You cannot change things, though, unless you have self-awareness.

What we have found through a variety of studies that we and others have done is that you have the capacity within you to change that narrative, to get rid of this evolutionary baggage, if you will, so that you can have a life of purpose and meaning.

But it has to be related to connection with others, and it has to be one in which there’s an environment that is nonjudgmental.

Let me ask you a question. How many people have a dialogue in their head that says they’re not good enough, smart enough and, in fact, that they’re impostors?

This is part of the problem, because when you beat yourself up and you don’t have compassion for yourself, it’s hard to be open, to give love to others and to be nonjudgmental.

The other thing that happens is that when you’re fearful and anxious, you shut down your executive control functions.

As a result, you don’t make discerning judgments. Again, it reemphasizes this isolation and loneliness.

But as I mentioned, over the last several years, we and others have developed techniques whereby we can change that.

It’s interesting. I sometimes say, if I said I had a pill that was organic, had no side effects, had readily available ingredients and would solve this issue, where you would feel connected, where you would feel loved, where you would see the world as an optimistic place and where your physiology would, in fact, work at its best, how much would that drug be worth?

Your cardiac function would improve. Your peripheral vascular function would improve. Your immune system would be boosted.

The production of inflammatory hormones that are associated with a lot of chronic disease states would be decreased.

How much would that drug be worth?

I wish I was a pharmaceutical company, right?

Well, let me tell you that that pill exists.

The only requirement is that you sit in silence once a day after you take that pill. You breathe slowly in and out, and you think of, actually, believe it or not, that person in your life who has given you unconditional love and accepted you.

Because when you do that, when you put yourself into this mental state, everything changes.

You shift from this mode of fear and anxiety to one of openness, inclusiveness and a sense, because you are connecting with others, which is our default mode, that your life has meaning and purpose.

That is readily available to all of us.

This work that I have been doing, and others have been doing, understanding positive emotional states and how to bring those to yourself, there’s an entire body of evidence now that shows the power of these types of mental practices.

When you are truly living, it not only connects you with others, but at the end of your days, it allows for transcendence and the gift of having a life of meaning and purpose that goes beyond the end of your life.

So by truly living, it allows you to end well.